Fearing a Digital Future

There was a time, not so long ago, when I really loved the idea of a digital future. The concept of having everything at my fingertips without having to worry about a disc drive failing or scratching my discs is, in my mind, the future. It still amazes me that I have literally hundreds of games on my PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and even my phone and will never have to put a disc in a tray to play them.

Yet, despite all of my anticipation for never needing another disc again, I’m scared like crazy of this all-digital future. Recent occurrences give me absolutely no hope for this future, despite how awesome it could all be. We’ve seen publishers charge for content that should be ours to begin with, we’ve seen massive hacking and loss of personal data and even had the odd scare that games will simply stop working. This future frightens me to my very core.

Rock Band iOS users were terrified when they saw this message displayed in-game.

Lets start with the two most recent things that have driven me to be terrified of this future.Very recently, Rock Band iOS users were terrified that their version of the game would simply stop working. They had a message sent to them saying that the game would no longer work after May. After a lot of outrage, EA formally announced that it was an error and that the game would continue to work.

That is good, but this situation has highlighted a somewhat big issue within the gaming world. EULA’s have almost completely relinquished control of a video game that you have purchased to the publisher. Games can simply stop working, or more commonly, you can pay money for a game and not have access to everything that you paid for.

Capcom has recently been making a mess of things by charging for unlock codes for content that is already on a disc. Dead Rising 2: Off the Record and Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City both have “downloadable content” that is on the disc. Not only is it disingenuous to call content that is on a disc “downloadable,” but it’s also a pretty bad business practice to make customers pay even more for content that is on a disc.

Cliff Bleszinksi has recently called on-disc DLC an “unfortunate reality.”

“And often for compatibility issues, [on] day one, some of that content does need to be on-disc. It’s an ugly truth of the gaming industry. I’m not the biggest fan of having to do it, but it is one of the unfortunate realities.”

Call me a cynical idiot but this is one of the biggest cop-outs I’ve ever seen in my life. Perhaps the issue would go away if, I don’t know, you included this DLC in the main game. The thing is I like the concept of DLC. If I can add in some more play time to my game after I’ve played through it, that’s kind of awesome. What’s not awesome is the fact that I can buy a game and have a sizable portion locked out because a publisher feels I should pay more.

Again, this wasn’t an issue ten years ago. Yes, there were expansions but these almost always were worthwhile. It wasn’t as though a basic set of features was being locked out to us. This problem didn’t exist before the advent of high speed internet and it shouldn’t exist now.

If developers want to nickel and dime users, there is actually a decent solution: enter the free to play market. I actually have very little issue with a developer charging money for a stupid hat or some new mode in a game that is free to play, since no investment was made up front. As more and more free-to-play games emerge, it will actually be beneficial for these companies to enter into these markets. Just so long as you don’t make a $60 investment at the front, this practice seems way less shady.

After weeks of calls, I still don’t have access to my World of Warcraft account.

This isn’t the only reason that I fear the digital future though it is a good one. Personally, I’ve had multiple accounts across various platforms stolen. My Battle.net account was hacked and my World of Warcraft account is banned as a result of another player stealing and abusing my account. It’s taken hours of calls just to get my Battle.Net account back and I’m sure it will take even more to get my World of Warcraft account back.

Thankfully, though, in both of those cases, much of my personal data wasn’t stolen. I can’t say that for when my Xbox Live account was stolen, however. One morning, I awoke to find that a hundred dollars had been charged through my PayPal account. I instantly locked my bank account, contacted PayPal and began investigating. It turned out that someone had, in the middle of the night, stolen my Xbox Live account and bought over a hundred dollars worth of content, including Lucha Fury. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they stole my money, they also stole it for a really bad game.

It was an extremely stressful month after. I was calling Microsoft on a weekly basis, sometimes having my own identity questioned. By the time everything was settled, it had taken well over a month. I wasn’t out any money, but the stress of that situation was insane.

The Playstation Network suffered from a massive attack in April of 2011.

We all remember last year when the PlayStation Network was hacked. Anyone who had an account was worried that their personal data was in trouble. Sure, Sony offered a year’s worth of identity protection and a few free games as compensation, but it was hardly enough to make up for the stress that many suffered as a result. It made us all aware that all of our information could easily be stolen. After all of this, I immediately changed all of my passwords in some vain hope that it might help.

However, a lot of security doesn’t require complex hacking to get around. All that someone needs to do is figure out a way to mine your personal information. For instance, if someone wants to get into your email, they can simply say that they forgot the password. After digging a bit through websites like Facebook and others, they can gather enough information to answer your security questions. It’s a frighteningly simple process and we should be far more concerned about it.

Thankfully, some companies are getting wise. With my Gmail account, if you are logging into my account for the first time on a new computer, a text is sent to my phone with a security code. Steam offers Steam Guard, which offers a similar service.

These kinds of services are going to be needed in the next few years as we’ve seen plenty of high level hacking problems occur. If someone were to try to get into my Xbox Live account and fail, I want Microsoft to send me a text message with a security code. If a new IP address tries to log into my PlayStation Network account, I want an email sent telling me that it’s happening. As it stands, there are very few resources for gamers on consoles to protect themselves. There are no offensive measures being taken. Generally, you have to wait until you know your account has been stolen until you can actually do anything.

Again, the concept of having everything easily available to you should be really amazing. We shouldn’t have to worry about these concepts, but since we do we need more safeguards for the consumer. You shouldn’t simply lose access to everything because of an EULA and you shouldn’t have to worry about having hundreds of dollars stolen from you because you have information on Facebook. Now, we just need to make sure that video game companies understand this.